The Crown suggested Monday that the Guelph Conservative campaign manager in the 2011 federal election was likely involved in the misleading “Pierre Poutine” robocall sent out during the campaign, but argued that the “evidence establishes beyond a reasonable doubt” that campaign worker Michael Sona is guilty.

“It appears that more than one person was involved in executing the plan,” Crown prosecutor Croft Michaelson said, but added there’s reason to believe that Sona was the main actor.

Sona, who was 22 at the time of the call, faces up to five years in prison if convicted of sending the illegal call. The Guelph campaign manager at the time, Ken Morgan, moved to Kuwait to work as an English teacher in 2012, and has never spoken to investigators about the call.

Michaelson told Justice Gary Hearn that Sona was a “directing mind” of the scheme, which sent hundreds of opposition supporters to the wrong polling station on May 2, 2011.

Justice Hearn interrupted Michaelson several times during his submission, questioning the reasoning behind his assertions. Michaelson said there were three reasons to believe Sona was behind that call.

First, he said, several witnesses have testified that Sona asked about the techniques used to send anonymous robocalls during the campaign. Michaelson said that evidence from the Crown’s star witness, deputy campaign manager Andrew Prescott, “should likely be approached with caution,” but other witnesses spoke of Sona’s interest in dirty political calls. Prescott testified after securing an immunity deal from the Crown.

Sona’s former friend, political staffer Chris Crawford, testified that he overheard Sona and Morgan discuss the “exact” voter suppression techniques used in the case.

Second, during the campaign, Prescott sent Sona an email with his login information for RackNine, the Conservative voter contact firm that was used to send the call.

Hearn interrupted Michaelson to point out that the evidence is that Morgan, not Sona, requested that information, which the prosecutor acknowledged.

Third, four witnesses have testified that Sona discussed details of the scheme after he returned to Ottawa but before the robocalls story was reported in the media.

Defence lawyer Norm Boxall has suggested that the evidence of the witnesses was contaminated by the media reports.

Michaelson spent much of Monday morning going through a detailed timeline of events leading up to the call, relying on logs from RackNine that show two accounts being accessed: client 45, which belonged to Presott, and client 93, which belonged to “Poutine” (the name used by the anonymous account holder).

The timeline shows that at one point when Prescott was logged in to his legitimate account, someone was buying a visa card at a drug store later used in the scheme, which suggests that Presott couldn’t be behind the plot.